Kingdom Hearts 3 May Release In Japan First, A Fragmentary Passage Is Not Entirely Cut Content

The release date news is seriously a bummer.

You know how Final Fantasy 15 will be launching worldwide simultaneously? That’s really exciting, especially given just how broad and active the franchise’s international fanbase is, and it’s also cool because in this day and age, staggered releases make no sense, especially for big publishers like Square Enix.

However, don’t expect it to be a trend for all Square Enix games- for instance, if you expected the long awaited Kingdom Hearts 3, the sister game to Final Fantasy 15, to be getting a similarly simultaneous launch worldwide too, well, don’t. Speaking to Famitsu (via Gematsu), Tetsuya Nomura, director of the game, confirmed that the game may get a slightly earlier launch in Japan than the rest of the world.

Nomura also spoke about Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, specifically noting that Birth by Sleep 0.2 -A Fragmentary Passage- is not just made of content that was cut from Kingdom Hearts 3– it was content that Nomura felt he needed to make, but he didn’t want it to bog down the pace of the story in Kingdom Hearts 3, so he put a lot of it in HD 2.8 instead.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is expected to launch late next year on PS4 and Xbox One at the earliest.